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"disappointment bordering on disgust"

"they're working with a script that is so very, very bad"

"the screenwriters' aforesaid incompetence at creating character and relationship in a script"

"a deeply ruined adaptation"

Dear O' Dear....some people really are hard to please aren't they? What do you make of Orson's review (below)? Does he have a point? Or did Mr. Card just wake up on the wrong side of the bed?

YOUR opinions, comments & feedback PLEASE!!!

Read Orson Scott Card's GoT Review Below (Rhinoceros Times: April 28 2011)

I've now watched the first two episodes of HBO's adaptation of George R.R. Martin's glorious epic fantasy A Game of Thrones, and I must confess to disappointment bordering on disgust.

 

They poured so much money into a lavish production, and engaged the services of so many talented actors, that it's deplorable that they're working with a script that is so very, very bad.

 

What you notice first is the amount of pointless nudity. Now, it happens that in the coarse medieval world of Martin's novels, there is a casual attitude toward sex. But Martin never, not once, uses sex pornographically. It's not described in detail, and it is always used as part of character revelation, relationship building or plot complication. You don't dwell on it, you know that it happened and you move forward in the story.

 

But the screenwriters, perhaps compensating for their utter inability to find a filmic replacement for the deep-penetration viewpoint of Martin's writing, have taken any excuse for nudity and sex and blown it up into full-fledged, if soft-core, porn.

 

Moments that are fleeting or merely referred to in passing in the book are inflated into scenes that stop the story cold. Where Martin gave us a glimpse, these writers call for a lingering, jiggling closeup. The result is that the actors and George R.R. Martin are demeaned and diminished.

 

Combine that with the screenwriters' aforesaid incompetence at creating character and relationship in a script, and what you have is a deeply ruined adaptation.

 

And yet ... I watched these installments immediately after having reread (or rather listened to) the book, and I must say that I loved the designers' visualization of the scenery and structures in the book. The casting is excellent (except for the Dothraki king Drogo, who looks like a steroid-using weightlifter rather than a hard-bodied horseman) and I'm happy to replace my own images with theirs.

 

Also, the title sequence has an animated map of the Seven Kingdoms that is breathtaking to a cartophile like me.

 

So I'm going to TiVo the rest of the series and then fast forward through the stupid, utterly unsexy nude scenes, as I did with Kara DioGuardi's judging on American Idol.

 

But wouldn't it have been nice if HBO had presented an adult version of this masterpiece of fantasy literature, instead of giving us the lonely-14-year-old-boy's version.

The Rhinoceros Times, April 28 2011